Re: singleton and memetics

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
20 Nov 1998 01:05:47 +0100

christophe delriviere <darkmichet@bigfoot.com> writes:

> I've eared several years ago
> that totally isolated childrens are dying of their isolation for example
> (i don't know if this is a true fact). Seem that the human brain has
> really to be shaped by an environment.

Yes, our brains need input to develop into something useful. Isolated children don't die (except of physical deprivation, of course), but their mental growth is stunted. Not all cases are hopeless, but there are likely critical periods necessary to set up the pathways for e.g. social perception or language.

> By analogy, i believe a stellar
> singleton would have to be exponentially more shaped. Of course, i'm
> aware there is different kind of autism. In my previous mail, using
> "deep autism", i was referring to a rather complete isolation.

But this is an entity whose internal world may be a rich source of information; it might even be more interesting than the outside universe.

> i think a value system is part of an identity. For a single isolated
> system, i think it could be very very difficult to emerge an identity.

Is there any need for an identity?

> So if you want to emerge a kewl singleton of a certain size and
> complexity, i think you will probably have to make little brothers of
> the same order for him ;)..

Besides, it is much easier to make many small entities than one huge all-encompassing one. And the social life becomes more interesting.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y